So it’s Halloween night in Australia. Halloween is not big at all here in Toowoomba. It is supposedly growing in popularity in the larger cities like Brisbane but in Toowoomba, which has 150,000, it is still pretty under celebrated. When I went to the grocery store, the entire store had approximately six shelves of halloween items and that was pretty common for Halloween displays.

The family I am nannying for actually has never done Halloween. Can you imagine being 12 and never having gone trick or treating?!? Clearly, I saw this as my opportunity to bring the Halloween spirit to Australia. The kids, knowing I was a huge fan of Halloween, actually bought costumes before I even arrived, anticipating that I would want to do something. 1 witch and 2 vampires. The few packaged costumes were all pretty standard like that. As you’ll see from the photo above, there wasn’t much selection.

I wanted to get the kids pumped for Halloween as best I could though. There was rumors that one street was going to have trick or treating so we decided to make our own trick or treating bags. In hindsight, these bags were entirely too big for the goodies we got but I like how they can reuse them if they want for trick or treating or other things. Check out our super fun creations! The kids took 1-2 hours to work on. I took 2 days (all the bags have a front and a back decorated). I’m so pokey!

So, this morning, we had our bags made and our costumes out and the kids were stoked! I broke the dress code of the childrens’ catholic school by sending the 5 year old off with Halloween ribbons in the braids I did for her. Rules be damned! It’s Halloween!!

I was having a hard time getting in the spirit with it being so warm out and no decorations anywhere! So I decided to spruce up the house with whatever decorations I could find.  I think I did a fairly decent job considering what little I had to work with…

I did this while the kids were in school. I was also in charge of dinner tonight (for the first time) because I wanted to do a Halloween theme. This was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be because 1. I could not find canned pumpkin anywhere. So that eliminated most of what I wanted to do (ie: pumpkin shaped pumpkin pancakes (I also couldn’t find a pumpkin cookie cutter), pumpkin burgers, etc), and 2. even if I could find canned pumpkin, the kids don’t like pumpkin or squash flavored things (side note: Aussies call most squashes pumpkins, like Butternut Pumpkin or Japanese Pumpkin, etc. Very weird). So, I got creative! We had Quesadilla Pumpkins (they’d never heard of a quesadilla) and Guacamole with a side of carrots (the only orange, non-squash veggie I could find). I think it came out cute!

That little pumpkin was a HUGE pain to carve cause the inside was stringy like a spaghetti squash. I definitely wasn’t expecting that! The kids loved the food though, especially the “pumpkin vomit”. We had to take the chips away so they would eat their veggies.

After they were fueled up, we went trick or treating. So. Weird! I knew it was going to be different but actually experiencing it was bizarre. The houses were all dark and no one had decorations. I would say 1 in 5 places actually had candy or treats. We only really got a handful of houses I think that were giving things out. One old lady had a bag of loose gummy “snakes” (aka gummy worms) and loose jelly beans and she just had us open our bags and she dumped them in. That SO wouldn’t fly in the states. The Dad I work for ate some jelly beans so I know they aren’t laced with arsenic or something but I’m still having a hard time eating them! 28 years of “NEVER EAT OPEN CANDY” is a hard thing to shake. Then one guy didn’t have any candy so he opened his freezer and gave the kids ice cream popsicles! In the end, my stash looked like this:

I’m pretty sure that’s how much candy I get from the bowl at my house usually! LOL!

We ended the night all munching on our “lollies” (Aussie speak for candy) and watching Hocus Pocus (which they’d never seen!). The kids had a great time and the little 5 year old said that this was the best night she’s had! So I think I succeeded in bringing the Halloween spirit to at least one tiny bit of Australia 🙂

This post was a lot longer than I anticipated so I will post my alternative cheese quesadilla recipe tomorrow.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!! (yes, I did bring my own cat ears from America in anticipation of Halloween and no, I have no idea what sort of cat expression that is. I apparently don’t hang with cats often)